


sweet reflection (knife into me)

by betony



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 22:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18822010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: Medea and Hera, throughout her tale.





	sweet reflection (knife into me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



My story begins in a garden, where three goddesses waited for me to choose among them. 

Oh, no, Medea, you will say—we know your story, and it does not flow that away; you are an after-thought only, to the travels of the  _ Argo _ . Or: we know the tale of which you speak, and it belongs to another; will you steal that for yourself, too, Princess of Colchis?

To which I say: Enough. This is my tale, and my truth, and I choose to unwind it as I will. The herdsman of Troy was nothing special; only the last in a long line to make that particular judgment. I was, if not the first, then close enough to it. Dark-eyed, daring, daughter of Aeetes—not a goddess lived who wouldn’t want me as a devotee. 

My choices, however, were the three who stood before me. Golden Aphrodite, who offered love unending and unerring; gray-eyed Athena, who offered wisdom far-reaching; and great Hera, who offered power beyond all expectation. I looked at Aphrodite, and found her weak and unsteady; I looked at Athena, and found her cold and unyielding; and I looked to the Queen of Heaven and found in her all I wanted to be.

“My lady,” I whispered, and bowed my head; “Take me into your hands.”

Foolish it may be to anger two great goddesses, but only consider. Love? I knew what to expect of love; my sister Chalciope had made eyes at wealthy merchants and visiting dignitaries, swooned and sighed about Eros’ power over her, and it had not stopped my father from betrothing her to the first penniless foreigner to come to our lands. Wisdom? That I was familiar with also. My mother Idyia was well-accounted to be calm, dependable, and quiet, none of which had stopped my father from setting her aside and taking other consorts, as she was too wise to cause a fuss. 

I wanted nothing to do with either of them, I who had grown to womanhood in the shadow of the Golden Fleece and its draconic guardian; rather, it was my father, who held the fleece’s fate in the palm of his hand, who I aspired to become. 

“Yes,” sighed Hera, she of the beautiful eyes. “I believe that might be arranged.”

* * *

A man approached, crossing the wine-dark sea, all for me though he scarcely knew it—so my goddess assured me.

“Do I need him?” I asked, chewing on a mint leaf so noisily Hera’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “I am the granddaughter of life-bringing Helios, after all, and the great-granddaughter of Oceanus his brother. Ought that not to be enough?”

Hera tossed her head. “And what, little one, became of Helios’ own child, other than a short fiery death for one, and a long bitter existence eternally weeping for the others? What other fate had Tethys’ favorite daughter than to find herself bound beneath her brother’s tyranny?”

I remembered, all too late, that Hera herself was a child of the Titans herself, and fostered by Oceanus and his wife before Zeus Thunderer took her—or tricked her—to wife. I recalled that where people had burned sacrifices to her alone in the woods of Argos, they now knelt before her husband. I spoke none of this.

“Learn this from me if nothing else,” whispered Queen Hera, and for the first time I heard malice in those sweet tones, “that she questions the mastery of men is lost.”

“I shall question your wisdom no longer,” I assured her, and if she noticed it was not the promise she sought, she said nothing of it. She smiled, wide and red-cheeked, like a contented child and took my chin into her hands: a posture of pleading, but her words were nothing but command. 

“Mortals live only so long,” she whispered. “We outlast them all.”

* * *

 

My aunt Circe might have absolved me of sin, and that is why I persuaded Jason to stop by her island; but now, as I waited under the moonlight, it was not her I wanted to see.

My goddess came to me, hair wet from the waters of Kanathos, and she took my hands, sticky though they were with blood.

“He didn’t say a word,” I told her, pale and frightened and very certain I would cry like a child, “not one, not even when he saw the dagger, or Father watching from his ship—“

I wished my brother had. It might have made it easier to kill him. 

“Shush,” said Hera, impossibly young, and so must she have seemed when she slew Titans alongside her siblings and usurped her own father. Her hair fell along my cheek; I closed my eyes and wanted nothing more than to linger in this moment with her. “Shush.”

It was not forgiveness, I don’t think, not so much as it was an admonition not to disturb her newfound peace, but it was all my goddess had for me.

I was grateful for it regardless.

* * *

 

When they told me of Glauce of the white arms and the insipid grey eyes, I hardly credited the rumors that she had managed to incite my husband’s desire. But you know the ugliness of it: all the world does by now.

This too you know. I begged Jason not to forsake me; I betrayed myself. I reminded him that I was a strange woman in a strange land, friendless other than the new family I had created for myself. I told him I had nothing left but him in all the wide world.

He had no fine words for me in return, no pliant persuasions. He said flatly: “And what would our goddess, the mother of all cultured things, say to that? She has more in mind for me than marriage to a wild thing like yourself; she has said as much herself.”

Then I knew Hera for what she was in truth: a cruel thing, inconstant, who’d used me as she’d advised me to use Jason to make my escape from my father’s lands. His life might be ephemeral, but my shame at being so carelessly discarded would be eternal. This is what Hera’s patronage had won me--this is what her promises were worth.

When I raised my hand to my children, I did not think that they were Jason’s flesh and blood. No, instead I mused that the goddess’ province was motherhood, and what better way to strike against her? So would she know how little I cared for her.

I left Corinth behind on dragon-back, bolstered by righteous rage. My children’s corpses I left behind in Hera’s sacred grove, a final insult for her duplicity.

* * *

 

One can only outrun a goddess’ reach for so long. Before too long I knew Jason’s last child to lie in wait within my womb, heavy already, and instead of remaining in Corinth or making my way to Athens, both homes of the goddesses I had once scorned, I retreated instead to lands past even my father’s purview. 

She found me there, the Mistress of All, Hera  Chḗrē-- and laughed.

“At last,” she said, tossing her dark braid over her shoulder. “I wondered how much more it would take, to set you upon your course. Certainly I tired of meddling in the affairs of that fool Jason. You'll be pleased to know he waits alone in Hades; the prow of the _Argo_ did for him what you could not bear to.”

I glared at her, haggard as I was. My hair was matted, my eyes purple with fatigue. “I have broken with you,” I informed her, “I know of your deceit, I will follow your ways of meekness and matronhood no longer--”

Hera laughed outright, white teeth gleaming. “What did I tell you, little princess? She who questions the mastery of men--”

“Is lost,” I finished for her. “And so I am, here among savages, none who know me or my child.”

“But who know me,” Hera corrected, “by another name, my own, and who will be known to me by your name. A _Median_ _Empire_ has a charming sound to it, don't you agree?”

I stared at her, hardly daring to hope.

“She who is lost is free,” said Hera, not two-faced but three-formed, “and there is no greater power than freedom.”

Queen of this realm, as my goddess had promised, with a son to rule after me, and at my side--

“My lady,” I whispered, and bowed my head. “Take me into your hands.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Vienna Teng, "My Medea."  
> Kanathos is the legendary spring where Hera renewed her youth and beauty annually. Hera Chḗrē literally means "widowed, divorced, separated."  
> Hera's similarities to Medea (particularly as compared to Jason, whose patron she traditionally is) always fascinated me, and so I always wanted to write a version where _Medea_ is the object of her interest and Jason her tool. I hope you enjoy this AceQueenKing!


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